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Rick Hall, the producer who forged the Southern soul style known as the Muscle Shoals sound, died on Tuesday at his home in Muscle Shoals, Ala. He was 85.

His wife, Linda Kay Hall, said the cause was prostate cancer.

Mr. Hall turned small-town Alabama into a crucible of soul, country, pop and rock after he founded FAME Studios in 1959 in Florence, Ala. FAME stands for Florence Alabama Music Enterprises, although in 1961 the studio moved to nearby Muscle Shoals, where it remains. Mr. Hall also started FAME Publishing, which would amass a substantial catalog of hits, and FAME Records.

Veteran U.S. astronaut John Young, who walked on the moon and even smuggled a corned beef sandwich into orbit during one of his six missions in space, has died at age 87, NASA said on Saturday.

Young had been due to command a 1986 flight that was canceled after the explosion of the shuttle Challenger earlier that year. He ended up as the only person to fly on space shuttle, Apollo and Gemini missions.

Young was born on Sept. 24, 1930, in San Francisco and grew up in Orlando, Florida. After receiving a degree in aeronautical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1952, he entered the Navy and graduated from its test pilot school. NASA picked him in 1962 for its astronaut program.

"The Foo is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together on one message board with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson blogged alone." JFK -4.29.62-

His biggest hit was “Grazing in the Grass,” a peppy instrumental from 1968 with a twirling trumpet hook and a jangly cowbell rhythm. In the 1980s, as the struggle against apartheid hit a fever pitch, he worked often with fellow expatriate musicians, and with others from different African nations. On songs like “Stimela (Coal Train),” “Mace and Grenades” and the anthem “Mandela (Bring Him Back Home),” he played spiraling, plump-toned trumpet lines and sang of fortitude and resisting oppression in a gravelly tenor, landing somewhere between a storyteller’s incantation and a folk singer’s croon.

To his legions of fans, Mr. Millers annual ski flick amounted to cinematic manna from heaven  an overdue shot of cold air and deep snow to stoke the fires within winter warriors who had suffered through the long, hot months of snowless summer. The films, most of which began with jaw-dropping alpine-ski sequences, featuring top skiers and snowboarders delivered by helicopter to some knee-knocking heights and set to a pounding rock-music beat, never failed to produce hooting, shouting and delirium among the snow-deprived faithful.
The pumped-up atmosphere, Mr. Miller told The Seattle Times in 1995, was like showing a porno film on an aircraft carrier six days out of port.

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"thnk god for few" jazzdelmar(12/12/11 12:50pm)
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"When most of us couldn't buy a basket. Where do we get off anyway?!" siliconzag (11/17/06 5:45:41 pm)
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I am monitoring the price of a donut
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Mort Walker, whose “Beetle Bailey” comic strip followed the exploits of a lazy G.I. and his inept cohorts at the dysfunctional Camp Swampy, and whose dedication to his art form led him to found the first museum devoted to the history of cartooning, died Jan. 27 at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 94.

Bill Morrison, president of the National Cartoonists Society, confirmed the death. The cause was pneumonia.

In contrast with the work-shirking soldier he immortalized, Mr. Walker was a man of considerable drive and ambition. He drew his daily comic strip for 68 years, longer than any other U.S. artist in the history of the medium.

Debuting in 1950, “Beetle Bailey” was distributed by King Features Syndicate and eventually reached 200 million readers in 1,800 newspapers in more than 50 countries. Beetle and company appeared in comic books, television cartoons, games and toys and were also featured in a musical with the book by Mr. Walker, as well as on a U.S. Postal Service stamp in 2010.

Kamprad will be laid to rest once someone finds the allen wrench and locking cams needed to assemble the casket. . .

This cartoon courtesy of Esquire.

"The Foo is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together on one message board with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson blogged alone." JFK -4.29.62-